


deerskin

by amalthea (Wren_Song)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:19:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wren_Song/pseuds/amalthea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail Hobbs has conflicted feelings about her father.</p><p>Warning for: character study, emotional incest, Will and Hannibal dad feelings unrelated to said emotional incest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deerskin

He was loving until he wasn’t. Until he wasn’t.

***

Will says _you could hurt me_.

Hannibal says _you could be my monster_.

It shouldn’t be so hard to choose.

***

The thing is:

There was something wrong enough with her, deep down wrong, that her first father wanted to kill her. So when Will comes all tender and tentative, all careful and caring, Abigail thinks of the ways she could take him apart. 

She doesn’t hate Will. She doesn’t even dislike him. But she is so, so afraid of him.

***

“He never touched me,” she tells Dr. Lecter, “They ask me that all the time in therapy, you know? If my dad abused me. But he didn’t.”

“Sometimes, I think they wish he had. That’d be a better story, right? If my dad had molested me. And sometimes—sometimes I want to say he did, just so they’d stop asking. They think I’m lying when I say he didn’t.”

“I told Dr. Bloom that I thought she wanted me to be _fucked_ by my _father_. That she got off on it. I don’t think she liked that.”

***

He never touched her. Not once. He never even looked like—

She sits in group with women whose father ripped them apart and put the bleeding pieces back together. Yes, her father killed girls so he wouldn’t kill her. But he never took her out to the cabin and yanked her clothes off. He never said she’d be a bad girl if she didn’t help him take the edge away. He never asked her to put her mouth or her hands or her body on him.

Maybe if he had all those girls would be alive. Maybe it’s her fault.

***

“You took on a great deal of emotional responsibility at a young age, didn’t you?” Dr. Lecter has the gentle, dispassionate voice of a priest on T.V. “Your mother was distant. You assumed the role of confidant for your father.”

“He didn’t touch me.”

“Abigail, I believe you. Why do you feel the need to keep protesting that?”

***

When she was twelve she got her period.

It wasn’t a big deal, or anything. She told her mother right away and got a pad. She didn’t even stay home a single day, because it didn’t hurt. Her periods have never hurt like she knows they hurt other people—Abigail is lucky that way.

When her father found out he kissed her forehead and said, sadly, “I guess you’re not my little girl anymore.”

Garrett Jacob Hobbs _loved her_. He loved her so much that he could never, ever bear to hurt her. He loved her so much that eight girls died because something was wrong with Abigail. Something was so wrong with her that he had to think of _not killing her_ every single day. Something is so wrong with her, all the time. Something is wrong with her and she doesn’t know exactly what it is.

Or yes. She does. She knows.

***

Will is so fragile and so gentle. Will wants to protect her. He’s never looked at her wrong, not once. When he touches her she feels safe, not apprehensive. This shouldn’t be so hard for her.

And yet: she feels like she could ruin him. 

When she kills that boy she knows she was right to believe she’d never deserve him.

***

Hannibal is as steady and implacable as a stone. He doesn’t care what she is, what’s wrong with her. It’s always like he’s already waiting for her to tell him the truth.

And he’s a bad person. He’s twisted and wrong in all the worst ways.

He is exactly what she deserves and she _needs to stop_.

***

Her father never, not once, touched her.

***

Or is that true? What is she not telling herself?

***

This is what she remembers:

When she was twelve she locked the door on the bathroom because her father would come in while she was taking a bath. Not to look at her, or anything. Just to shave or to apply deodorant or to rummage for cologne. And when she locked the door for the first time he broke the lock because she was being inconsiderate.

When she was fourteen he made jokes about her training bras, holding them in his hands, and she was so embarrassed. He’d stuff them with Kleenix and leave them in her bed.

When she was fifteen she missed a date because he was crying so hard in the basement she was afraid for him. They stayed up all night watching awful movies and eating popcorn.

“He wasn’t a bad person,” she says, defensively, “I mean—he was. But not to me. He loved me. I love him. Is that wrong, to still love him?”

“He was your father, Abigail. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

***

Her father never, not once, touched her.

***

Abigail feels like she’s going to come apart, one way or another. Every revelation, every word, everything she does: it all feels like chips in the dyke.

“Do you only speak about him here?”

“No one else wants to believe me.”

***

He taught her how to fish and how to hunt, but he didn’t wish for a boy. Her father loved _her_ , individual and unique. When she was little he built her a perfect dollhouse, with a bedroom and kitchen and living room and everything. He wrote tiny books with a magnifying glass. It was the most perfect thing any girl she knew had.

He taught her how to ride a bike with pink tassels on the handlebars. For her tenth birthday he put together a Pink Power Ranger party because that’s what she wanted—he even iced the cake for her. Every time she needed a shoulder to cry on, no matter how tired he was, he’d be there for her.

“I think that’s the worst part,” she tells Hannibal, curled up on his couch next to him with her eyes closed, “That he wasn’t a monster. He was my _dad_. And I miss him.”

***

Her father never, not once—

He wanted to.

How does someone know that? How do you realize that about your own father? 

It was before he started killing girls. But she helped that happen, didn’t she? When she tried to get away? And she killed her mother when he didn’t need her anymore; he killed her mother first because he loved Abigail better. And it’s her fault, her fault. There is something so wrong with her, because why else would her father want to fuck and kill her? Her loving, careful, normal father?

Abigail did it. She knows that.

“You’re a victim, Abigail,” Hannibal says, but. What does he know?

***

When Abigail dreams, she runs and runs and runs and there is nowhere to go. 


End file.
